There may be nothing terrible in the condition of annihilation, yet the moral effect is deplorable; indeed, to doubt the eternal existence is to argue that man’s life is but a plaything of the Deity. The notion of annihilation is so abhorrent, that he who believes it dooms himself indeed to a miserable existence; for the crowning solace of a Christian life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift of immortality.
“Know’st thou th’ importance of a soul immortal? Behold this midnight glory—worlds on worlds! Amazing pomp: redouble this amaze! Ten thousand add; and twice ten thousand more; Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all, And calls th’ astonishing magnificence Of unintelligent creation poor.”
Would that Priestley had read wisely that prophetic truth in Ecclesiastes: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
EV. I do not approve his latitude of thought, yet it were severe to think this, even of Priestley, merely because he disbelieved _separate_ spiritual existence; for Aristotle also asserts, that “the soul could not exist _without the body_, and yet that it was not the body, but a part of it.” Zeno, and the Stoics, termed that which was called a spirit _material_; and not only Ray and Derham, but even Paley, and Johnson, disbelieved the separate existence. The archdeacon’s opinion, that we should have a _substantial_ resurrection, is founded on New-Testament evidence, and expressed in his discourse on a future state. The apostle’s simile of the wheat implies a _death_ of the grain: it dies, but there is no _remodelling_, for it is the _germ_ that lives and grows; so, although the body may not be restored, there is a development of _its_ germ in the transit or resurrection of _its_ spirit. The sage thought also the simile of St. Paul should be taken _literally_, and not _figuratively_: and yet he qualifies it thus: “We see that it is not to be the same body, for the Scripture uses the illustration of grain sown (which in its exact sense implies an offspring, and not a resurrection), and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with what is sown. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body; it is enough if there be such a sameness as to distinguish identity of person.”